Embodiments of the present invention relate to customizing products over a network, and in particular to customizing a collection of products over the Internet. Customized sporting products, such as customized sporting apparel and customized sporting equipment, can provide significant benefits when undertaking a wide variety of activities. For example, customized sporting items can help people adapt to different environmental conditions. For some activities, customized sporting items can contribute to, and even enhance, performance. For example, customizing the size of a sporting item to an individual user, e.g. to the specific size, weight or body measurements of an athlete, results in a sporting item that has an optimal fit for this particular athlete, thereby leading to an improved usability during a sports activity and hence to improved performance of the athlete.
Product customization over the Internet is a fast-emerging market due in no small part to modern advances in technology. Product customization has its roots in individual tailoring. That is, if someone desired a customized product, such as a t-shirt with a hand-drawn image embedded on the front, that person would take the drawing to a nearby tailor. The tailor would then begin with a base garment such as a white t-shirt and subsequently use any suitable method (such as by heat pressing a piece of transfer paper having the desired image) to embed the image on the garment.
Today, this similar model has been applied to Internet technology so as to reduce the consumer's burden of visiting the tailor. That is, websites are available that allow consumers to customize a product using their computer. The website typically provides digital images of the base product, such as a white t-shirt or coffee mug. The consumer may then input text or select an image provided by the website to have formed on the base product, or may even upload their own image to have formed on the base product. Upon ordering, the customized product is then shipped to the consumer.
While the advances in providing customized products to consumers have been significant, they still suffer from numerous deficiencies. For example, the focus on individual consumers makes the customization of more than one product for groups of consumers very inconvenient and inefficient. Further, using today's individual-focused techniques, there are simply no provisions for relating products to one another and customizing those related products. This is not surprising, however, as today's techniques evolved from the historical model of customizing single products for single individuals.